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Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Favorite Royal Images: A Royal Celebrity

Indian film star Raima Dev Sen Verma is the daughter of Moon Moon Sen and Bharat Dev Varma, a member of the Royal Family of Tripura, India. Her grandmother was Princess Ila Devi of Cooch Behar and her aunt was Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur. Her great-grandmother, Princess Indira, was the only daughter of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda.

Devi was born in London in 1919 into the Indian royal family of Cooch Behar, whose women were known for their fierce independence. Her grandmother had defied the tradition of purdah and moved into public life, her mother refused an arranged marriage and married a man she loved, while Devi herself challenged the most powerful Indian woman of the 20th Century, Indira Gandhi.

Devi stood against Gandhi's Congress Party in the 1960s and made an enemy of Nehru's daughter when she won what was then a world record majority. Mrs Gandhi retaliated by scrapping all remaining privileges of the Indian royals and Devi was later jailed for five months on tax charges.

Indeed, I have often wondered if the British had systematically gone through India and deposed every Raja and Maharaja and said, 'ye shall have no king but the Emperor in London' if the Indian government after independence would have restored them all. As it turned out, India got rid of their empire and stripped themselves of more of their own history and culture than the Raj ever did.

It's sad because the Indian monarchies were absolutely magnificent. Treasures of the world.

I'm sorry - going to stick my neck out here - I think she looks more like a high-class call girl, not regal at all. A regal woman has no need of putting her 'goods' on display like this and assuming a certain kind of facial expression.